26 February 2009
Richard Traherne, commercial director and division manager, global wireless division, Cambridge Consultants
Richard Traherne, Cambridge Consultants' commercial director and division manager, global wireless division, speaks with Graham Pitcher
GP: How will the mobile phone evolve in 2009?
RT: In 2009, we will see the emergence of product enabled mobile services, particularly in the areas of entertainment, health and well being, and personal productivity. The main difference will be that these services are meaningful for the user – they will have value because of their relevance to the user’s context, such as location or activity.
This will be driven in large part through innovation by product manufacturers and application developers. Mobile internet will emerge as a force in its own right and the focus will be on personalised, contextually relevant applications that are intended for use on the go.
While the wireless communications sector will not be immune from the general trends in the macro economic environment, cash rich and time poor consumers will still be willing to pay for a small number of valuable services that help them make the most of their time.
GP: What kind of applications can we expect?
RT: 2009 will see the launch of a number of intelligent, useful and usable applications that are both context aware and context relevant, and hence logically better accessed from a mobile handset rather than a computer screen inside the home. These will continue to evolve the mobile phone into more than just a communications device.
Location based services based on the GPS platform are already beginning to make their impact. The obvious next step will be for the development of services that use location data to provide information that is relevant to a user’s current activity and which might be intelligently coordinated with the provision of other information or services.
Expect to see new services like a ‘taxi broker’. At the press of a button, the service determines the user’s location, places a request for a taxi and informs the user when it is likely to arrive – similar services have already been launched in South Korea.
The applications that succeed will be those that are easy and intuitive and which offer real ‘lifestyle support’. People don’t want to manually connect to a service or specify the optimal settings in which to receive the information. Nor do they want the hassle of updating or configuring their devices. This all has to be seamless.
Today, people are becoming used to accessing daily information such as email, news, weather, reviews and directions from the internet. The next step is to make this available wherever the user might be, but – crucially – in a form that suits their specific mobile environment. This could be as a personalised ‘what’s on’ guide for a given evening in the particular city you happen to be in. If the recommendations came with a ticketing facility, directions and local restaurant information, the value would be immediately apparent.
GP: What sort of companion devices and services will be required?
RT: These will needto deliver the promises of the mobile internet will need to provide a very rich interface if they are to be useful. This will come from a combination of the overall processing power, their design and the immediacy of the communications behind them.
We will also see the proliferation of wireless systems that deliver high traffic density, high peak transfer rates in low cost and long battery life configurations. The pioneers in this sector will be ideally placed to exploit these technologies and to reap the inevitable rewards, but they will only be able to do so on the basis of a detailed understanding of the technology, and – more importantly – a visionary approach to wireless service delivery and companion product design.
The growth in the availability of ubiquitous broadband access, and the market penetration of devices focused on data, and service delivery, will set the stage for the emergence of an ecosystem of peripheral devices. These peripherals will use the handset as a hub to achieve direct connection to online services, delivering content, and collecting data locally to further enhance the relevance of the service to the user.
Health and wellbeing applications will be some of the first to emerge. For example, behavioural coaching systems that provide guidance on activity levels through the course of the day, based on data collected by body worn activity monitors. In 2009, we will see the first handsets featuring Bluetooth Low Energy chips, enabling a new range of lower power peripherals. Peripherals using this technology will have the capability to run for weeks or even months on compact batteries, collecting small periodic measurements.
This ecosystem will provide the opportunity to develop new services that are further enhanced by contextually relevant data and which enable new business models. Revenue could be generated from the device peripherals or from the enhanced services they enable. Alternatively, operators or device manufacturers may use them to generate new revenue or unique selling points in an ever more competitive market.
The trend towards a highly productive and mobile and work from home workforce will continue as enterprises try to cut costs. In consequence, enterprises will adopt products and services that enable staff to make the best use of their time. There will be a shift to new enterprise IT infrastructure that will give users access to identical services both within and outside the workplace building – the single handset paradigm, driving the growth of the femtocell network model. Many advanced data services will be product and technology enabled and one can expect the role of operators and service providers to evolve. Today, many operators are investing in service delivery platforms to give them the flexibility to offer advanced services rapidly. However, there is a high probability that their role will change and they may become disaggregated; ultimately serving as a conduit through which excellent services can be reached and mirroring the trend that has been seen in the fixed broadband world.
Hence it will be the imaginative service creators, application and product developers – as has been demonstrated by the likes of RIM, Nokia, Apple and Google/Android – that will lead the development of this market.
GP: What about the standards war?
RT: The wireless landscape has been dominated over the past couple of decades by the emergence of multiple standards, such as DECT, GSM, Bluetooth and WiFi. The great standards wars have dominated the industry landscape and this issue has played itself out to some extent.
Standards are beginning to be seen for what they are – a means to allow developers to make use of the possibilities of the infrastructure. The services will be the fundamental driver to the success of any standard, and the services that will win are those that are useful, make life simpler, and which are tailored to the consumer being out and about.
This application led focus will constitute a shock to many tech OEMs, who have been used to driving demand through the early availability of faster, cheaper, smaller (or such other ‘performance’ parameter) technology.
However, performance and availability should be second to the product’s ability to deliver a meaningful, valuable and contextually relevant service – seamlessly, attractively, effortlessly and in real time.
That said, identification of these winning products and services is not straightforward. We need to be creative enough to stand back from the technology and focus instead on the benefits and services that are being targeted.
Author
Chris Shaw
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com
Companies
Cambridge Consultants Ltd
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